During China’s Cultural Revolution, one of the most tragic and least
understood political upheavals of the 20th century, Mao Zedong’s call to
“make revolution” was answered by tens of millions of Chinese...and one
American. The Revolutionary is a feature-length documentary
film about the Maoist era and Sidney Rittenberg, an American who assumed
an unprecedented role for a foreigner in Chinese politics. In those
calamitous times, Mao’s last stand to hold on to power and to his
political legacy, Rittenberg rose to prominence—the most important
foreigner in China since Marco Polo.

As a college student in the American South of the 1930’s, Rittenberg
had taken up the cause of labor and of civil rights. He arrived in China
as a GI at the end of World War ll and stayed to join the communist
side in the civil war that brought Mao to power in 1949, the only
American citizen to become a member of the Chinese Communist Party. He
worked side-by-side with the Party leadership in the politically
important Broadcast Administration, in charge of the English-language
section of Radio Beijing. He also was a trusted translator of Central
Committee documents and of Mao’s Collected Works.

At the height of the Cold War that isolated America from China in the
1950’s and 60’s, China was consumed by a political and ideological
struggle that reached its climax in the Cultural Revolution, since
labeled “China’s Holocaust.” It was an era of widespread destruction in
which millions died, that all but destroyed the Chinese Communist Party,
and whose reverberations are felt to this day. During his thirty-four
years in China, beginning in the communist guerilla headquarters of
Yan’an to the end of the Maoist era, Rittenberg was singled out as both a
hero and a victim, hailed by Mao as “an international communist
fighter” and condemned by Mao as “an imperialist spy.” He was imprisoned
twice. In all, he spent 16 years in solitary confinement. He survived
to tell his story, an insider’s uncompromising account of China’s
revolutionary turmoil. No American has been in a better position to
understand first-hand that era. Rittenberg knew its leaders personally,
including Mao, Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, and Premier Zhou Enlai. He was a
follower, a colleague and a participant in those turbulent times. He led
his life with the courage of his convictions. Even more important, he’s
had the courage to re-examine those convictions, to question his own
beliefs and behavior, and to do so on-camera.

Now 90 years old, his extraordinary memory opens a door to
understanding China, then and now, that outsiders very rarely are
allowed to enter. His perspective and insight could only have been
provided by someone who was there. And it is made all the more
compelling by Rittenberg’s irrepressible sense of humor, and irony, and
of anecdote, evident during twenty-six hours of interviews that took
place over a five-year period beginning in 2005. The filmmakers have
transformed those interviews into an extraordinary portrayal of
historical events unknown to many Chinese, let alone to most Americans.
Provided courtesy of Stourwater Pictures. Unrated. Running time: 92 minutes.
(Text from USC School of Cinema)